Although several projects for a French occupation of Egypt had been advanced in the 17th and 18th centuries, the purpose of the expedition that sailed under Napoleon I from Toulon in May 1798 was specifically connected with the war against Britain. Napoleon had discounted the feasibility of an invasion of England but hoped, by occupying Egypt, to damage British trade, threaten India, and obtain assets for bargaining in any future peace settlement. Meanwhile, as a colony under the benevolent and progressive administration of Revolutionary France, Egypt was to be regenerated and would regain its ancient prosperity. The military and naval forces were therefore accompanied by a commission of scholars and scientists to investigate and report the past and present condition of the country.

Eluding the British Mediterranean fleet under Horatio Nelson, the French landed at Abū Qīr (Aboukir) Bay on July 1 and took Alexandria the next day. In an Arabic proclamation, Napoleon assured the Egyptians that he came as a friend to Islam and the Ottoman sultan, to punish the usurping Mamlūks and to liberate the people. From Alexandria the French advanced on Cairo, defeating Murād Bey at Shubrākhīt (July 13), and again decisively at Imbābah, opposite Cairo in the Battle of the Pyramids on July 21. Murād fled to Upper Egypt, while his colleague, Ibrāhīm Bey, together with the Ottoman viceroy, made his way to Syria.

After entering Cairo (July 25), Napoleon sought to conciliate the population, especially the religious leaders (ʿulamāʾ), by demonstrating his sympathy with Islam and by establishing councils (divans) as a means of consulting Egyptian opinion. The destruction of the French fleet at Abū Qīr by Nelson in the Battle of the Nile on August 1 virtually cut Napoleon’s communications and made it necessary for him to consolidate his rule and to make the expeditionary force as self-sufficient as possible. The savants, organized in the Institut d’Égypte, played their part in this. Meanwhile, Egyptian resentment of alien rule, administrative innovations, and the growing fiscal burden of military occupation was exacerbated when the Ottoman sultan, Selim III (1789–1807), declared war on France on September 11. An unforeseen revolt in Cairo on October 21 was suppressed after an artillery bombardment that ended any hopes of cordial Franco-Egyptian coexistence.

Ottoman Syria, dominated by Aḥmad al-Jazzār, the governor of Acre (now ʿAkko, Israel), was the base from which French-occupied Egypt might most easily be threatened, and Napoleon resolved to deny it to his enemies. His invasion force crossed the frontier in February 1799 but failed to take Acre after a protracted siege (March 19–May 20), and Napoleon evacuated Syrian territory. A seaborne Ottoman invading force landed at Abū Qīr in July but failed to maintain its bridgehead. At this point Napoleon resolved to return to France, and he succeeded in slipping away, past the British fleet, on August 22.

His successor as general in chief, Jean-Baptiste Kléber, viewed the situation of the expeditionary force with pessimism and, like many of the soldiers, wished to return to the theatre of war in Europe. He therefore entered into negotiations with the Ottomans and by the Convention of Al-ʿArīsh (Jan. 24, 1800) agreed to evacuate Egypt. Sir Sydney Smith, the British naval commander in the eastern Mediterranean, sponsored the convention, but in this he had exceeded his powers and was instructed by his superior officer, Admiral Lord Keith, to require the French to surrender as prisoners of war. Although the Ottoman reoccupation was well under way, Kléber and the French determined on resistance and defeated the Turkish forces at the Battle of Heliopolis (March 20). A second revolt of Cairo, fomented by Ottoman fugitives, took about a month to suppress; but French authority had been restored when Kléber was assassinated by a Syrian Muslim, Sulaymān al-Ḥalabī, on June 14.

His successor, ʿAbd Allāh Jacques Menou, a French officer (and former nobleman) who had turned Muslim, was determined to maintain the occupation and administered at first a tolerably settled country, although he lacked the prestige of his two predecessors. In 1801 a threefold invasion of Egypt began. British troops were landed at Abū Qīr in March, while the Ottomans advanced from Syria. Shortly afterward, British Indian forces were landed at Quṣayr on the Red Sea coast. The French garrison in Cairo capitulated in June and Menou himself at Alexandria in September.

The brief episode of the French occupation was to be significant for Egypt in several ways. The arrival of a European army accompanied by scholars and scientists appropriately inaugurated the impact of the West, which was to be felt increasingly afterward. Egypt, insulated for centuries by the Mamlūk and Ottoman sultanates, was no longer immune from European influence; it had become an object of the contending policies of France and Britain, a part of the Eastern Question. Napoleon’s savants had little success in interpreting Western culture to the traditionalist ʿulamāʾ of Cairo; their achievement was rather to unveil Egypt to Europe. They uncovered the celebrated Rosetta Stone, which held a trilingual inscription making it possible to decipher hieroglyphs and which thus laid the foundation of modern Egyptology. Their reports and monographs were collected in the monumental Description de l’Égypte (“Description of Egypt”), which was published in parts from 1809 to 1828 in Paris.

Of more immediate consequence for Egypt was the effect of the French occupation on internal politics. The Mamlūk ascendancy was fatally weakened. Murād Bey, who had made his peace with the French, died shortly before their capitulation in 1801; and Ibrāhīm Bey, who returned to Egypt with the Ottomans, had henceforward little power. The new Mamlūk leaders, ʿUthmān Bey al-Bardīsī (died 1806) and Muḥammad Bey al-Alfī (died 1807), former retainers of Murād, headed rival factions and had in any case to reckon with the British and Ottoman occupation forces. In March 1803 the British troops were evacuated in accordance with the Treaty of Amiens (March 27, 1802). But the Ottomans, determined to reassert their control over Egypt, remained, establishing their power through a viceroy and an occupying army, in which the most effective fighting force was an Albanian contingent. The Albanians, however, acted as an independent party and in May 1803 mutinied and installed their leader as acting viceroy. When he was assassinated shortly afterward, the command of the Albanians passed to his lieutenant, Muḥammad ʿAlī (reigned 1805–49), who, during the ensuing two years, cautiously strengthened his own position at the expense of both the Mamlūks and the Ottomans.

Muḥammad ʿAlī and his successors (1805–82)

In May 1805 a revolt broke out in Cairo against the Ottoman viceroy, Khūrshīd Pasha. The ʿulamāʾ invested Muḥammad ʿAlī as viceroy. For some weeks there was street fighting, and Khūrshīd was besieged in the citadel. In July Sultan Selim III confirmed Muḥammad ʿAlī in office and the revolt ended.

Muḥammad ʿAlī’s viceroyalty was marked by a series of military successes, some of which were attended by political failures that frustrated his wider aims. After the renewal of war between Britain and Napoleonic France in 1803, Egypt again became an area of strategic significance. A British expedition occupied Alexandria in 1807 but failed to capture Rosetta and, after a defeat at the hands of Muḥammad ʿAlī’s forces, was allowed to withdraw.

Military expansion

In Arabia, the domination of Islam’s holy cities, Mecca and Medina, by puritanical Wahhābī Muslims was a serious embarrassment to the Ottoman sultan, who was the titular overlord of the Arabian territory of the Hejaz and the leading Muslim sovereign. At the invitation of Sultan Mahmud II (reigned 1808–39), Muḥammad ʿAlī sent an expedition to Arabia that between 1811 and 1813 expelled the Wahhābīs from the Hejaz. In a further campaign (1816–18), Ibrāhīm Pasha, the viceroy’s eldest son, defeated the Wahhābīs in their homeland of Najd and brought central Arabia within Egyptian control. In 1820–21 Muḥammad ʿAlī sent an expedition up the Nile River and conquered much of what is now the northern portion of the Sudan. By so doing, he made himself master of one of the principal channels of the slave trade and began an African empire that was to be expanded under his successors.

After the outbreak of the Greek insurrection against Ottoman rule, Muḥammad ʿAlī, at Mahmud’s request, suppressed the Cretan revolt in 1822. In 1825 Ibrāhīm began a victorious campaign in the Morea in southern Greece, where his military success provoked intervention by the European powers and brought on the destruction of the Ottoman and Egyptian fleets at the Battle of Navarino (Oct. 20, 1827). The Morea was evacuated the following year.

In 1831 Muḥammad ʿAlī embarked upon the invasion of Syria. His pretext was a quarrel with the governor of Acre, but deeper considerations were involved, particularly the growing strength of the sultan, which might threaten his own autonomy. Syria, moreover, was strategically important; and its products, especially timber, usefully complemented the Egyptian economy. The viceroy’s forces defeated the Ottomans at Kütahya near Konya in Anatolia (December 1832), and in 1833 the sultan ceded his Syrian provinces to Muḥammad ʿAlī.

In 1839 Ottoman forces reentered Syria but were defeated by Ibrāhīm at the Battle of Nizip (June 24). A fortnight later Mahmud II died, and the Ottoman Empire seemed on the verge of dissolution; it was saved only by European intervention. In 1840 the European powers compelled Ibrāhīm to evacuate Syria. Muḥammad ʿAlī’s Arabian empire (which since 1833 had extended into Yemen) crumbled at the same time. Although in 1841 the new sultan, Abdülmecid I (reigned 1839–61), conferred on the family of Muḥammad ʿAlī the hereditary rule of Egypt, the viceroy’s powers were declining. Because of the viceroy’s growing senility, Ibrāhīm took power in July 1848. But the son’s reign lasted only a few months until his death the following November. The next viceroy was ʿAbbās I (reigned 1848–54), the eldest grandson of Muḥammad ʿAlī (who died in 1849).

Administrative changes

Muḥammad ʿAlī’s military exploits would not have been possible but for radical changes in the administration of Egypt itself. Muḥammad ʿAlī was a pragmatic statesman whose principal objective was to secure for himself and his family the unchallenged possession of Egypt. His immediate problem on his accession was to deal with the Mamlūks, who still dominated much of the country, and the ʿulamāʾ, who had helped him to power. The strength of these two groups rested largely on their control of the agricultural land of Egypt and the revenues arising therefrom. Gradually, between 1805 and 1815, Muḥammad ʿAlī eroded the system of tax farming (iltizām) that had diverted most of the revenues to the Mamlūks and other notables, imposed the direct levy of taxes, expropriated the landholders, and carried out a new tax survey. In 1809 he divided and outmaneuvered the ʿulamāʾ, and in 1811 he lured many of the Mamlūk leaders to a celebration at the citadel, where he had them massacred. Ibrāhīm expelled their survivors from Upper Egypt, effectively destroying them as a political force.

Muḥammad ʿAlī thus became effectively the sole landholder in Egypt, with a monopoly over trade in crops, although later in his reign he made considerable grants of land to his family and dependents. The monopoly system was extended in due course from primary materials to manufactures, with the establishment of state control over the textile industry. Muḥammad ʿAlī’s ambitious hopes of promoting an industrial revolution in Egypt were not realized, fundamentally because of the lack of available sources of power. The monopolies were resented by European merchants in Egypt and clashed with the economic doctrine of free trade upheld by the British government. Although a free-trade convention that was concluded between Britain and the Ottoman Empire in 1838 (the Convention of Balta Liman) was technically binding on Egypt, Muḥammad ʿAlī succeeded in evading its application up to and even after the reversal of his fortunes in 1840–41.

The old-style military forces (including the Albanians) on whom Muḥammad ʿAlī relied against his internal opponents and who conquered the Hejaz, Najd, and the Sudan were heterogeneous and unruly. An attempt to introduce Western methods of training in 1815 provoked a mutiny. Muḥammad ʿAlī then decided to form an army of slave troops dependent wholly upon himself and trained by European instructors. The conquest of the Sudan was intended to provide the recruits. But the slaves, encamped at Aswān, died wholesale, and Muḥammad ʿAlī had to seek most of his troops elsewhere. In 1823 he took the momentous step of conscripting Egyptian peasants for the rank and file of his “new model army.” On the other hand, the officers were mostly Turkish-speaking Ottomans, while the director of the whole enterprise, Sulaymān Pasha (Col. Joseph Sève), was a former French officer. The conscription was brutally administered and military life harsh. There were several ineffective peasant revolts, and some potential inductees fled to the towns or to the desert.

As reorganization proceeded, the viceroy gradually built a new administrative structure. While institutions were created and discarded according to his changing needs, Muḥammad ʿAlī depended essentially upon the members of his own family, particularly Ibrāhīm, and loyal servants, such as his Armenian confidant Boghos Bey. Characteristic of his governmental system were councils of officials, convened to deliberate on public business, and administrative departments (divans) that bore some resemblance to the ministries of European governments. In local administration, Muḥammad ʿAlī established a highly centralized system with a clear chain of command from Cairo through the provincial governors, down to the village headmen. Initiative was not encouraged, but firm control had taken the place of anarchy.

These changes necessitated the training of officers and officials in the new Europeanized ways of working; and this in turn resulted in the creation of a range of educational institutions alongside the traditional Muslim schools that prepared the ʿulamāʾ. Much of the foundation work was done by expatriates, while missions of Egyptian students were sent to Europe, especially to Paris. One of these missions was accompanied by Rifāʿah Rāfiʿ al-Ṭahṭāwī (1801–73), who served as its religious teacher and later played the leading part in inaugurating the translation of European works into Arabic. He thus was a pioneer both in the interpretation of European culture to Egypt and in the renaissance of literary Arabic. The establishment of a government printing press in 1822 facilitated the wide dissemination of the new books.

ʿAbbās I and Saʿīd, 1848-63

The reign of ʿAbbās I (1848–54) indicates how precarious was the advance of westernization in Egypt. The effort had already been relaxed in the last decade of Muḥammad ʿAlī’s rule, and ʿAbbās showed himself to be a traditionalist. It was typical of his policy that he closed the school of languages and the translation bureau and sent their director, al-Ṭahṭāwī, to virtual exile in the Sudan. The French, who had played so large a part in Muḥammad ʿAlī’s reforms, fell into disfavour, and for diplomatic support ʿAbbās turned to their British rivals, whose help was needed against the Ottomans. Although initially ʿAbbās was ostentatiously loyal to the sultan, he resented an attempt made at that time to curtail his autonomy. The British, for their part, managed to enhance their communications with India by winning from ʿAbbās a concession to build a railway from Alexandria to Cairo; the line was completed between 1851 and 1856 and was extended to Suez two years later. Saʿīd (reigned 1854–63), who succeeded on ʿAbbās’s mysterious and violent death, inaugurated another reversal of policy. While he lacked Muḥammad ʿAlī’s energy and ability, he was not unsympathetic to the Westernizers. To his French friend Ferdinand de Lesseps (who had been a friend to Muḥammad ʿAlī as well) he granted in 1854 a concession for the cutting of a canal across the isthmus of Suez. This embroiled him both with the sultan, whose prerogative had been encroached upon, and the British, whose overland railway route was threatened by the project; a deadlock lasted throughout his reign.

Ismāʿīl, 1863–79

Ismāʿīl, the son of Ibrāhīm Pasha, who succeeded on the death of Saʿīd, displayed some of his grandfather’s dynamic energy and enthusiasm for modernization. He lacked caution, however, and his reign ended in catastrophe. From his predecessors he inherited a precarious economy and a burden of debt. The decline in North American cotton exports caused by the American Civil War (1861–65) greatly increased Britain’s demand for Egyptian long-staple cotton. This product had been introduced and developed in Muḥammad ʿAlī’s time, but its production had languished until the interruption of supplies of American cotton caused a fourfold increase in price during the war years. When peace returned, prices collapsed with disastrous consequences for the Egyptian economy. In the management of his finances, Ismāʿīl was both extravagant and unwise and laid himself open to unscrupulous exploitation. Ismāʿīl was committed to the Suez Canal project, but he modified the grant in two important respects: by withdrawing the cession of a strip of land from the Nile River to the Suez isthmus, along which a freshwater canal was to be constructed, and by refusing to provide unlimited (and largely unpaid) peasant labour for the project, a practice that had stirred great outcry in England and continental Europe. The matter was submitted to arbitration; a large indemnity was imposed on Ismāʿīl, who also agreed to pay for a large block of shares put by de Lesseps into Saʿīd’s account. French pressure on the sultan succeeded at last in overcoming resistance to the canal project at Constantinople, and a firman (decree from the sultan) authorizing its construction was granted in March 1866. Work had in fact already been going on for seven years, and in November 1869 the Suez Canal was opened to shipping by the empress Eugénie, the wife of Napoleon III of France. The incident symbolized the political and cultural orientation of Egypt in the middle decades of the 19th century.

Ismāʿīl, in other ways, presented himself as the ruler of a new and important state. Although his relations with his suzerain, Sultan Abdülaziz (reigned 1861–76), were normally friendly, he was no less eager than his predecessors to secure the autonomy of his dynasty. In 1866 he obtained a firman establishing the succession by primogeniture in his own line—abandoning the contemporary Ottoman rule of succession by the eldest male. A year later a firman conferred upon Ismāʿīl the special title of khedive, which had in fact been used unofficially since Muḥammad ʿAlī’s time and which distinguished the viceroy of Egypt from other Ottoman governors. A period of strained relations developed between the khedive and the sultan arising from Ismāʿīl’s implied pretensions to sovereignty at the time of the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, but the two were later reconciled; a firman reconfirmed the khedive’s privileges in 1873. These concessions by the sultan, however, cost Ismāʿīl heavy expenditure—in bribes to Ottoman officials in Constantinople—and an increase in the annual Egyptian tribute and were another factor in the growth of Ismāʿīl’s indebtedness.

Ismāʿīl had inherited an African empire in the northern area of the Sudan. Since the middle of the century, in consequence of the abolition of the monopolies, merchants had penetrated south and southwest, up the White Nile and the Al-Ghazāl rivers, in search of ivory. An ancillary slave trade that had developed distressed Europeans, who forgot that their depredations against Africans had continued virtually unabated until the early 19th century, and they prevailed on the khedive to abolish this commerce. Thus, acting on humanitarian and expansionist motives, Ismāʿīl sought to extend Egyptian rule into these remoter regions. He made considerable use of expatriates, notably the Englishmen Sir Samuel White Baker and Sir Charles George (“Chinese”) Gordon, who extended the khedive’s nominal authority to the African Great Lakes. Another series of events led to the conquest in 1874 of the sultanate of Darfur in the west. The khedive also wished to make Egypt the dominant power in the Red Sea region. The sultan granted him the old Ottoman ports of Sawākin and Mitsiwa in 1865. Egyptian control was established on the Somali coast, and in 1875 the city of Hārer was captured. Attempts to invade Abyssinia in 1875 and 1876 were, however, unsuccessful and marked the limits of Ismāʿīl’s imperial expansion.

Like other parts of the Ottoman Empire, Egypt was bound by the capitulations—a system of privileges derived from earlier Western treaties with former sultans. Under the capitulations, European and American residents in Egypt were exempt from local taxation and were subject only to their own consular courts. By patient negotiations over several years, Nūbār Pasha, Ismāʿīl’s Armenian minister, succeeded in establishing the Mixed Courts in 1875. These had jurisdiction in civil cases involving Egyptians and foreigners, or foreigners of different nationalities, and had both foreign and Egyptian judges, who administered codes based on French law.

By that time the social consequences of the agrarian and political changes inaugurated by Muḥammad ʿAlī were clearly appearing. The khedive and his family were Egypt’s principal landholders, possessing extensive personal estates quite apart from the state lands. Around the khedivial family was a parvenu aristocracy that held the principal civil and military offices. Many of its members were also great landowners; most of them were Turkish or Circassian by origin. Although the peasantry’s condition had been harmed by military conscription, by corvées for public works (including large-scale demands for labour on the railways and the Suez Canal), and by ill-considered economic and industrial experiments, the rights of cultivators on their land gradually increased. The richer peasants, from whom the village headmen were recruited, in particular increased in importance. When, in November 1866, Ismāʿīl set up the consultative council known as the Assembly of Delegates, the members of which were chosen by indirect election, the great majority of those elected were village headmen. While Ismāʿīl did not intend to give any of his powers to the Assembly, its establishment and composition pointed to the political growth that would occur among native Egyptians in the next 60 years. Conscription had affected the makeup of the army. The power of the entrenched Turco-Circassians was challenged by native Egyptian officers, who resented the privileges of their foreign colleagues. The defeat of the Circassian commander in chief, Rātib Pasha, by the Abyssinians in 1876 was a blow from which the prestige of the old officer group never recovered.

From the Assembly, the army, and the westernized intelligentsia emerged politically conscious individuals and groups who drew their ideas from both Western and Islamic sources. Their organization was for the most part small-scale and ephemeral, and their outlook was subversive, being hostile to the autocracy of the khedive, the dominance of the Turco-Circassians, and the pervasive power of the Europeans.

Political tension increased in the last years of Ismāʿīl’s reign. Various expedients to postpone bankruptcy (e.g., the khedive’s sale in 1875 of his Suez Canal shares to Britain) had failed, and in 1876 the Caisse de la Dette Publique (Commission of the Public Debt) was established for the service of the Egyptian debt. Its members were nominated by France, Britain, Austria, and Italy. In the same year, Egyptian revenue and expenditure were placed under the supervision of a British and a French controller (the Dual Control). After an international enquiry in 1878, Ismāʿīl accepted the principle of ministerial responsibility for government and authorized the formation of an international ministry under Nūbār that included the British and French controllers in his cabinet. Ismāʿīl, however, was not willing to give up his autocracy. In 1879 he exploited an army demonstration against the European ministers to dismiss Nūbār, and he worked in alliance with the Assembly of Delegates to destroy international control over Egypt. By this time, however, his standing outside Egypt had been lost; and in June 1879, Sultan Abdülhamid II (reigned 1876–1909), instigated by France and Britain, deposed him in favour of his son, Muḥammad Tawfīq.

Renewed European intervention, 1879–82

European domination was immediately reasserted. The Dual Control was revived, with Evelyn Baring serving as the British controller. By the Law of Liquidation (July 1880), the annual revenues were divided into two approximately equal portions, one of which was assigned to the Caisse de la Dette, the other to the Egyptian government. The Assembly of Delegates was dissolved. The forces of resistance that Ismāʿīl had stimulated were not, however, allayed by these means. There had already come into existence a nationalist group within the Assembly, prominent among whom was Muḥammad Sharīf, prime minister from April to August 1879. In the army a group of Egyptian officers, whose leader was Aḥmad ʿUrābī (Arabi), was disaffected from the khedive and resentful of European control of Egypt. By 1881 these two groups had allied to form what was called the National Party (al-Ḥizb al-Waṭanī).

Tension surfaced when a petition was presented in January 1881 by ʿUrābī and two of his colleagues against the war minister, ʿUthmān Rifqī, a Circassian. They were arrested and court-martialed but were later set free by mutineers. Tawfīq gave in, dismissed Rifqī, and appointed Maḥmud Sāmī al-Bārūdī Pasha, one of ʿUrābī’s allies, as war minister. But the ʿUrābists still feared reprisals; a military demonstration in Cairo in September 1881 forced Tawfīq to appoint a new ministry under Sharīf and to convene a new Assembly. But the alliance between the officers and Sharīf was uneasy.

Meanwhile, the European powers were becoming increasingly alarmed. A joint English and French note sent in January 1882 with the intention of strengthening the khedive against his opponents had the opposite effect. The Assembly of Delegates swung toward the ʿUrābists. Sharīf resigned and al-Bārūdī became premier with ʿUrābī as war minister. Rioting ensued on June 11 after British and French naval forces had been sent to Alexandria. From this point Britain took the initiative. The French refused to join in a bombardment of Alexandria (July 11), while an international conference held at Constantinople was boycotted by the Ottomans and produced no solution of the problem. The British government finally resolved to intervene, having secured Tawfīq’s support, and sent an expeditionary force under Sir Garnet Wolseley to the Suez Canal. The ʿUrābists were soundly defeated at Tall al-Kabīr (Sept. 13, 1882), and Cairo was occupied the next day.

The period of British domination (1882–1952)

The British occupation and the Protectorate (1882–1922)

The British occupation marked the culmination of developments that had been at work since 1798: the de facto separation of Egypt from the Ottoman Empire, the attempt of European powers to influence or control the country, and the rivalry of France and Britain for ascendancy in the country. Because of the last-minute withdrawal of the French, the British had secured the sole domination of Egypt. William Ewart Gladstone’s liberal government was, however, reluctant to prolong the occupation or to establish formal political control, which it feared would antagonize both the sultan and the other European powers; but the British were unwilling to evacuate Egypt without securing their strategic interests, and this never seemed possible without maintaining a military presence there.

An incident at the outset of the occupation was a sign of future tensions. On British insistence, the khedive’s government was obliged to place ʿUrābī and his associates on public trial and then to commute the resulting death sentences to exile. Tawfīq’s prestige, slight enough at his accession, and diminished in the three years before the occupation, was still further undermined by this intervention of the British government. Meanwhile, Lord Dufferin, the British ambassador in Constantinople, visited Egypt and prepared a report on measures to be taken for the reconstruction of the administrative system. The projects of reform that he envisaged would necessitate an indefinite continuation of the occupation. The implications of this for British policy were slowly and reluctantly accepted by the ministry in London, under pressure from its representative in Cairo, the British agent and consul general, Sir Evelyn Baring, who in 1892 became Lord Cromer.

Two principal problems confronted the occupying power: first, the acquisition of some degree of international recognition for its special but ambiguous position in Egypt, second, a definition of its relationship to the khedivial government, which formed the official administration of the country. The main European opponents of recognition of the British position were the French, who resented the abolition of the Dual Control (December 1882). The Caisse de la Dette continued to exist, and until 1904 the British had to set their policies to deal with French opposition in this institution. In the early years of the occupation, when Egyptian finances were in disarray, French hostility posed an obstacle, but from 1889 onward there was a budget surplus and consequently greater freedom of action for the Egyptian government. A moderate degree of international agreement over Egypt was attained by the Convention of London (1885), which secured an international loan for the Egyptian government and added two further members (nominated by Germany and Russia) to the Caisse de la Dette. In 1888 the Convention of Constantinople (Istanbul) provided that the Suez Canal should always be open to ships of all countries, in war and peace alike. This was, however, a statement of principle rather than fact; without British cooperation it remained a dead letter.

In matters concerning Egypt’s international status, the decisions were made in London, but where the internal administration of the country was concerned, Cromer usually set the policies. Although throughout the occupation the facade of khedivial government was retained, British advisers attached to the various ministries were more influential than their ministers, while Cromer himself steadily increased his control over the whole administrative machine.

Tawfīq himself gave little trouble, but his prime ministers were more tenacious. Sharīf, premier at the beginning of the occupation until 1884, and his successors, Nūbār Pasha (1884–88) and Muṣṭafa Riyāḍ (Riaz) Pasha (1888–91), resigned because of clashes over administrative control. From then until November 1908, with a break in 1893–95, the prime minister was Muṣṭafā Fahmī Pasha, who proved to be Cromer’s obedient instrument.

ʿAbbās Ḥilmī II, 1892–1914

The death of Tawfīq and the accession of his 17-year-old son, ʿAbbās II (Ḥilmī), in 1892 opened a new phase of opposition to the occupation. The new khedive would not submit to Cromer’s tutelage, while the British agent resented the attempts of one so much his junior to play a serious role in Egyptian politics. ʿAbbās dismissed Muṣṭafā Fahmī in January 1893 and tried to appoint his own nominee as prime minister. Cromer, backed by the British government, frustrated these endeavours, and Fahmī eventually returned to office. ʿAbbās provoked another crisis in January 1894 by publicly criticizing British military officers, especially Horatio Herbert Kitchener, the sirdar (commander in chief). Once again Cromer stepped in and forced ʿAbbās to make a public apology.

Other considerations apart, the behaviour of ʿAbbās in the early years of his reign indicated the emergence of a new generation who had only been children when the occupation began. One of ʿAbbās’s contemporaries was Muṣṭafā Kāmil (1874–1908), who had studied in France and come to know a group of writers and politicians opposed to the British occupation. On returning to Egypt in 1894, he had reached an understanding with the khedive on the basis of their common opposition to the British occupation. By his speeches and writings (in 1900 he founded his own newspaper, al-Liwā), he endeavoured to create an Egyptian patriotism that would rally the entire nation around the khedive. A boost was given to nationalism by the campaigns for the reconquest of the Sudan (1896–98)—to which Egypt provided most of the money and troops, although the commanding officers were British—and by the 1899 Anglo-Egyptian Condominium Agreements, which nominally gave Egypt and Britain joint responsibility for the administration of the reconquered territory but in effect made the Sudan a British possession.

A final episode in the reconquest of the Sudan, the confrontation of British and French at Fashoda on the White Nile in 1898 (the Fashoda Incident), was followed by the reconciliation of the two powers in the Entente Cordiale (1904), which, inter alia, gave Britain a free hand in Egypt. This deflated the hopes of Muṣṭafā Kāmil and his alliance with the khedive, who became more willing to cooperate with Cromer. Muṣṭafā Kāmil now turned to Sultan Abdülhamid. When a dispute (the Tābah Incident, 1906) arose between the Ottomans and the occupying power over the Sinai Peninsula, Muṣṭafā Kāmil sought to rally Egyptian nationalist opinion in favour of the sultan, but some Egyptians accused him of harming their national interest in order to favour Islamic unity.

British domination in Egypt and Cromer’s personal ascendancy never seemed more secure than in the period following the Entente Cordiale. But the “veiled protectorate” had hidden weaknesses. Cromer was both out of touch and out of sympathy with the new generation of Egyptians. The occupation had become to all intents and purposes permanent, and the consequent growth of the British official establishment frustrated educated Egyptians, who sought government posts for themselves and their sons. The British, however, saw themselves as the benefactors of the Egyptian peasantry, whom they had delivered from the corvée and the lash. The Dinshawāy Incident showed them in another light. In June 1906 a fracas between villagers at Dinshawāy and a party of British officers out pigeon shooting resulted in the death of a British officer. The special tribunal set up to try the matter imposed exemplary and brutal sentences on the villagers. In the bitter aftermath of this affair, which strengthened Muṣṭafā Kāmil’s nationalists, Cromer retired in May 1907.

Sir Eldon Gorst, who succeeded Cromer, had served in Egypt from 1886 to 1904 and brought a fresh mind to bear on the problems of the occupation. He reached an understanding with the khedive and sought to diminish the growing power and numbers of the British establishment. At the same time, he tried to give more effective authority to Egyptian political institutions. Muṣṭafā Fahmī’s long premiership ended, and he was followed by a Copt, Buṭrus Ghālī. When Gorst died prematurely in July 1911, he had attained only limited success. Many British officials resented his policies, which at the same time failed to conciliate the nationalists. Muṣṭafa Kāmil had died in 1908 and had been succeeded by Muḥammad Farīd, who led the National Party toward greater extremism in its opposition to the British. A project to extend the Suez Canal Company’s 99-year concession by 40 years was thrown out by the General Assembly (a quasi-parliamentary body, set up in 1883), while Buṭrus Ghālī, who had advocated it, was assassinated a few days later by a nationalist. The appointment of Lord Kitchener to succeed Gorst portended the end of conciliation of the khedive. But Kitchener, although autocratic, was not wholly conservative; his attempts to limit the power and influence of ʿAbbās served the interests of the moderate Egyptians who did not belong to the National Party. The Organic Law of 1913 created a new and more powerful Legislative Assembly that served as a training ground for the nationalist leaders of the postwar period. At the same time, the peasants were helped by improved irrigation and by legal protection of their landholdings from seizure for debt.

World War I and independence

In November 1914 Britain declared war on the Ottoman Empire and in December proclaimed a protectorate over Egypt, deposed ʿAbbās, and appointed his uncle, Ḥusayn Kāmil, with the title of sultan. Kitchener was succeeded by Sir Henry McMahon, and he by Sir Reginald Wingate, both with the title of high commissioner. Although Egypt did not have to provide troops, the people, especially the peasantry, suffered from the effects of war. The declaration of martial law and the suspension of the Legislative Assembly temporarily silenced the nationalists. Ḥusayn Kāmil died in October 1917 and was succeeded by his ambitious brother, Aḥmad Fuʾād.

On Nov. 13, 1918, two days after the Armistice, Wingate was visited by three Egyptian politicians headed by Saʿd Zaghlūl, who demanded autonomy for Egypt and announced his intention of leading a delegation (Arabic wafd) to state his case in England. The British government’s refusal to accept a delegation, followed by the arrest of Zaghlūl, produced a widespread revolt in Egypt; and Sir Edmund Henry Hynman Allenby (later Lord Allenby), the victor over the Ottomans in Palestine, was sent out as special high commissioner. Allenby insisted on concessions to the nationalists, hoping to reach a settlement. Zaghlūl was released and subsequently led his delegation to the Paris Peace Conference (1919–20), where it was denied a hearing to plead for Egypt’s independence. The Wafd, in the meanwhile, had become a countrywide organization that dominated Egyptian politics. The Milner Commission (1919–20), sent to report on the establishment of constitutional government under the protectorate, was boycotted, but Lord Alfred Milner, who headed the commission, later had private talks with Zaghlūl in London. Finally, hoping to outmaneuver Zaghlūl and to build up a group of pro-British politicians in Egypt, Allenby pressed his government to promise independence without previously securing British interests by a treaty. The declaration of independence (Feb. 28, 1922) ended the protectorate but, pending negotiations, reserved four matters to the British government’s discretion: the security of imperial communications, defense, the protection of foreign interests and of minorities, and the Sudan. On March 15 the sultan became King Fuʾād I (reigned 1922–36) of Egypt.

The Kingdom of Egypt (1922–52)

The new kingdom was in form a constitutional monarchy. The constitution, based on that of Belgium and promulgated in April 1923, defined the king’s executive powers and established a bicameral legislature. An electoral law provided for universal male suffrage and the indirect election of deputies to the Assembly; the Senate was half elected and half appointed. But Egyptian constitutionalism proved as illusory as Egyptian independence. A political struggle was continually waged among three opportunist contestants—the king, the Wafd, and the British.

The interwar period

Never popular, Fuʾād felt insecure and was therefore prepared to intrigue with the nationalists or with the British to secure his position and powers. The Wafd, with its mass following, elaborate organization, and (until his death in 1927) charismatic leader Zaghlūl, was Egypt’s only truly national party. Ideologically, it stood for national independence against British domination and for constitutional government against royal autocracy. In practice—and increasingly as time went on—its leaders were prepared to make deals with the British or the king to obtain or retain power. Personal and political rivalries led to the formation of splinter parties, the first of which, the Liberal Constitutionalist Party, broke off as early as 1922. The primary aim of the British government, represented by its high commissioner (after 1936, its ambassador), was to secure imperial interests, especially the control of communications through the Suez Canal. The need for a treaty to safeguard these interests led Britain on more than one occasion to conciliate nationalist feeling by supporting the Wafd against the king.

The first general election, in January 1924, gave the Wafd a majority, and Zaghlūl became prime minister for a few months marked by unsuccessful treaty discussions with the British and tension with the king. When in November 1924 Sir Lee Stack, the sirdar and governor-general of the Sudan, was assassinated in Cairo, Allenby immediately presented an ultimatum that, though later modified by the British government, caused Zaghlūl to resign. The general election of March 1925 left the Wafd still the strongest party, but the parliament no sooner met than it was dissolved. For more than a year Egypt was governed by decree. The third general election, in May 1926, again gave the Wafd a majority. The British opposed a return of Zaghlūl to the premiership, and the office went instead to the Liberal Constitutionalist ʿAdlī Yakan, while Zaghlūl held the presidency of the Chamber of Deputies until his death in 1927. Once again, tension developed between the parliament and the king, and in April 1927 ʿAdlī resigned, to be succeeded by another Liberal Constitutionalist, ʿAbd al-Khāliq Tharwat (Sarwat) Pasha, who negotiated a draft treaty with the British foreign secretary. The draft treaty, however, failed to win the approval of the Wafd. Tharwat resigned in March 1928, and Muṣṭafā al-Naḥḥās Pasha, Zaghlūl’s successor as head of the Wafd, became prime minister. But the king dismissed him in June and dissolved the parliament in July. In effect, the constitution was suspended, and Egypt was again governed by decree under a Liberal Constitutionalist premier, Muḥammad Maḥmūd Pasha.

Draft treaty proposals were agreed upon in June 1929, but because Maḥmūd could not overcome Wafdist opposition, Britain pressed for a return to constitutional government, hoping that a freely elected parliament would approve the proposals. In the fourth general election (December 1929), the Wafd won a majority, and al-Naḥḥās again became premier. Treaty negotiations resumed but broke down over the issue of the Sudan, from which the Egyptians had been virtually excluded since 1924. Al-Naḥḥās also clashed with the king, whose influence he sought to curtail. He resigned in June 1930, and Fuʾād appointed Ismāʿīl Ṣidqī Pasha to the premiership. The constitution of 1923 was abrogated, replaced by another promulgated by royal decree. This, with its accompanying electoral law, strengthened the king’s power. By this and other measures, Ṣidqī sought to break the power of the Wafd, which boycotted the general election of June 1931. The strong government of Ṣidqī lasted until September 1933, when the king dismissed him. For the next two years palace-appointed governments ruled Egypt.

But Fuʾād, whose health was failing, could not hold out indefinitely against the internal pressure of the Wafd and the external pressure of Britain, which increasingly wanted a treaty with Egypt negotiated specifically through the Wafd. In 1935 the constitution of 1923 was restored, and a general election in May 1936 gave the Wafd a majority once more. Fuʾād had died in the previous month and was succeeded by his son Fārūq I (reigned 1936–52), who was still a minor when he ascended the throne. Al-Naḥḥās became prime minister for the third time. Agreement was quickly reached with Britain, and the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty, a document calling for mutual defense and alliance between the two countries, was signed in August 1936. At the conference in Montreux, Switz., held in the following year, Egypt, backed by Britain, obtained the immediate abolition of the capitulations and the extinction of the Mixed Courts after 12 years. Also in 1937, Egypt became a member of the League of Nations.

Al-Naḥḥās had reached the height of his power, but only briefly. In July 1937 the young king Fārūq came of age and assumed his full royal powers. Popular, with ambitions to rule, Fārūq soon turned against his prime minister. A split developed in the Wafd: Maḥmūd Fahmī al-Nuqrāshī Pasha and Aḥmad Māhir Pasha were expelled and formed the Saʿdist Party. The Wafdist youth movement, known as the Blueshirts, fought with the Greenshirts of Young Egypt, an ultranationalist organization. In December 1937 King Fārūq dismissed al-Naḥḥās. In the ensuing general election (April 1938), the Wafd won only 12 seats.

World War II and its aftermath

Although Egypt provided facilities for the British war effort during World War II (1939–45) in accordance with the 1936 treaty, few Egyptians backed Britain and many expected its defeat. In 1940 the British brought pressure on the king to dismiss his prime minister, ʿAlī Māhir, and to appoint a more cooperative government. When, early in 1942, German forces threatened to invade Egypt, a second British intervention—often termed the 4 February Incident—compelled King Fārūq to accept al-Naḥḥās as his prime minister. The Wafd, its power confirmed by overwhelming success in the general election of March 1942, cooperated with Britain. Nevertheless, Britain’s February intervention had disastrous consequences. It confirmed Fārūq’s hostility to both the British and al-Naḥḥās and tarnished the Wafd’s pretensions as the standard-bearer of Egyptian nationalism. The Wafd was weakened also by internal rivalries and allegations of corruption.

Al-Naḥḥās was dismissed by the king in October 1944. His successor, Aḥmad Māhir, was acceptable to the British, but he was assassinated in February 1945, at the moment Egypt declared war on Germany and Japan. He was succeeded by a fellow Saʿdist, al-Nuqrāshī.

At the end of World War II, Egypt was in a thoroughly unstable condition. The Wafd declined and its political opponents took up the nationalist demand for a revision of the treaty of 1936—in particular for the complete evacuation of British troops from Egypt and the ending of British control in the Sudan. Politics was passing into the hands of radicals. The Muslim Brotherhood, founded in 1928, developed from a mainstream Islamic reformist movement into a militant mass organization. Demonstrations in Cairo became increasingly frequent and violent. The pressure prevented any Egyptian government from settling its two main external problems: the need to revise the treaty with Britain, and the wish to back the Arabs in Palestine. Negotiations with Britain, undertaken by al-Nuqrāshī and (after February 1946) by his successor, Ṣidqī, broke down over the British refusal to rule out eventual independence for the Sudan. Egypt referred the dispute to the United Nations (UN) in July 1947 but failed to win its case.

Until the interwar period neither the Egyptian public nor the politicians had shown much interest in Arab affairs generally; Egyptian nationalism had developed as an indigenous response to local conditions. After 1936, however, Egypt became involved in the Palestine problem, and in 1943–44 it played a leading part in the formation of the Arab League, which opposed the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine. After World War II, Egypt became increasingly committed to the Arab cause in Palestine, but its unexpected and crushing defeat in the first Arab-Israeli war (1948–49), which had been launched with Syria, Iraq, and Jordan in response to the declaration of the State of Israel in May 1948, contributed to disillusionment and political instability. The Muslim Brotherhood stepped up its violent activities. Al-Nuqrāshī, again prime minister, tried to suppress the organization and was assassinated in December 1948. The Brotherhood’s leader, Ḥasan al-Bannāʾ, was murdered two months later.

The Wafd won the general election in January 1950, and al-Naḥḥās again formed a government. Failing to reach agreement with Britain, in October 1951 he abrogated both the 1936 treaty and the Condominium Agreement of 1899. Anti-British demonstrations were followed by guerrilla warfare against Britain’s garrison in the canal zone. British reprisals in Ismailia led to the burning of Cairo on Jan. 26, 1952. Al-Naḥḥās was dismissed, and there were four prime ministers in the ensuing six months.

The revolution and the Republic

The Nasser regime

At mid-century Egypt was ripe for revolution. Political groupings of both right and left pressed for radical alternatives. From an array of contenders for power, it was a movement of military conspirators—the Free Officers led by Col. Gamal Abdel Nasser—that toppled the monarchy in a coup on July 23, 1952. In broad outline, the history of contemporary Egypt is the story of this coup, which preempted a revolution but then turned into a revolution from above. For more than five decades, rule by Free Officers brought just enough progress at home and enhancement of standing abroad to make Egypt an island of stability in a turbulent Middle East.

The 1952 coup was fueled by a powerful but vague Egyptian nationalism rather than by a coherent ideology. It produced a regime whose initially reformist character was given more precise form by a domestic power struggle and by the necessity of coming to terms with the British, who still occupied their Suez Canal base.

The domestic challenge to Nasser came in February–April 1954 from Maj. Gen. Muḥammad Naguib, an older officer who served as figurehead for the Free Officers and had been president since June 1953, when Egypt officially became a republic. Political parties had been abolished in January of that year. To supplement his power base in the military forces, Nasser drew on the police and on working-class support mobilized by some of the trade unions. The small middle class, the former political parties, and the Muslim Brotherhood all rallied to Naguib. In the end, Naguib was placed under house arrest, and Nasser assumed the premiership. Nasser’s triumph meant that the government would thereafter rely on its military and security apparatus coupled with carefully controlled manipulation of the civilian population.

Obscured in the West was Nasser’s initial moderation regarding Egypt’s key foreign policy challenges—the Sudan, the British presence, and Israel. An agreement signed in February 1953 established a transitional period of self-government for the Sudan, which became an independent republic in January 1956. Prolonged negotiations led to the 1954 Anglo-Egyptian Agreement, under which British troops were to be evacuated gradually from the canal zone. Some Egyptians criticized the treaty from a nationalist perspective, fearing that external events could permit the British to reoccupy the canal bases.

An attempt to assassinate Nasser by a member of the Muslim Brotherhood in October 1954 was used as a pretext to crush that organization. A number of its members were executed and hundreds were imprisoned under brutal conditions. In the decades to come, these incarcerations were to bear bitter fruit as a generation of Brotherhood militants became hardened and drew new conclusions about the nature of the state in Egypt. One of them, a formerly secularist writer and scholar named Sayyid Quṭb who had come late to the Brotherhood, drew upon his prison experience to draft a template for modern Islamic holy war that was afterward embraced by a large number of Egypt’s Muslim militants.

In retrospect, it is clear that Nasser was a reluctant champion of the Arab struggle against Israel. Domestic development was his priority. A dangerous pattern of violent interactions, however, eventually drew the Egyptians into renewed conflict with Israel. Small groups of Palestinian raiders (fedayeen), including some operating from Egyptian-controlled Gaza, were infiltrating Israel’s borders. Early in 1955 the Israeli government began its policy of large-scale retaliation. One such strike—an attack on Gaza in February 1955 that killed 38 Egyptians—exposed the military weakness of the Free Officer regime, which tried, but failed, to buy weapons from Western countries.

In September 1955 Nasser announced that an arms agreement had been signed between Egypt and Czechoslovakia (acting for the Soviet Union). The way to improved Soviet-Egyptian relations had been prepared by Nasser’s refusal to join the Baghdad Pact (the Middle East Treaty Organization, later known as the Central Treaty Organization), which had been formed earlier that year by Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, and the United Kingdom, with the support of the United States, to counter the threat of Soviet expansion in the Middle East. With the 1955 arms deal, the Soviet Union established itself as a force in the region.

The erosion of Nasser’s initially pro-Western orientation hastened when the United States and Britain refused to give Egypt funds they had previously promised for the construction of the Aswān High Dam. Defiantly, Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal Company in July 1956 in order to use its proceeds to finance the dam. Britain and France, major shareholders in the company, were angered by Nasser’s actions (France was equally infuriated by Egyptian aid to the Algerians who were revolting against French rule) and sought to regain control of the canal by an intricate ruse. In collaboration with France and Britain, Israel, which continued to suffer raids by Egyptian-supported guerrillas, attacked Egypt in October. The two European powers then brought in their own troops, claiming to be enforcing a UN peace resolution, and reoccupied the canal zone. Pressure on the invading powers by the United States and the Soviet Union, however, soon ended the so-called Suez Crisis, leaving Nasser, despite his military losses, in control of the canal. The following year, Egypt agreed to the placement of a UN Emergency Force (UNEF) in the Sinai Peninsula to act as a buffer between Egyptian and Israeli forces.

Nasser, who, as the sole candidate, had been elected president in June 1956, pursued a more radical line in the ensuing decade. He created the National Union as an instrument of mobilizing the people and launched an ambitious program of domestic transformation, a revolution from above that was paralleled by a drive for Egyptian leadership in the Arab world. Early in 1958 Egypt combined with Syria to form the United Arab Republic (U.A.R.), but Egyptian dominance antagonized many Syrians, and the union was dissolved in bitterness in September 1961 (Egypt retained the name United Arab Republic until 1971). Nasser blamed the secession on Syrian reactionaries, and in direct response he pushed his revolution in Egypt further to the left. The following spring a National Charter proclaimed Egypt’s regime to be one of scientific socialism, with a new mass organization, the Arab Socialist Union (ASU), replacing the National Union. Most large manufacturing firms, banks, transport services, and insurance companies were nationalized or sequestered.

Egypt made dramatic domestic gains. In 1950 manufacturing contributed 10 percent to the total national output; by 1970 that figure had doubled. However, these achievements in industry were not matched in agriculture, and they were further undercut by Egypt’s rapid population growth. In a landmark move toward agricultural reform, Nasser enacted a policy in 1952 that limited land ownership to 200 feddans (208 acres [84 hectares]) per person.

Throughout this period the potential military danger from Israel was a constant factor in the calculations of the U.A.R. government. It worked to strengthen ties with the Soviet bloc and to promote cooperation among the Arab states, even though such attempts usually failed. Nasser masked essential Egyptian moderation on the Israeli issue with a militant rhetoric of confrontation in order to preserve his standing in the Arab world.

The failure of the union with Syria had been a blow to Nasser’s pan-Arab policy. To regain the initiative, Nasser intervened in 1962–67 on the republican side in Yemen’s civil war. This action led the U.A.R. into conflict with Saudi Arabia, which supported the Yemeni royalists, and with the United States, which backed the Saudis. Until then, Nasser had managed to obtain substantial aid from both the Soviet Union and the United States. Owing to congressional opposition to Nasser’s policies, U.S. aid was cut off in 1966.

This series of reversals figured prominently in Nasser’s decision to abandon his policy of “militant inaction” toward Israel. For 10 years, relative peace on the border with Israel had been maintained precariously by the presence of the UNEF stationed on the Egyptian side. In the Arab summit conferences of 1964 and 1965, Nasser had counseled restraint, but in 1966 events eluded his control. Palestinian incursions against Israel were launched with greater frequency and intensity from bases in Jordan, Lebanon, and, especially, Syria. A radical Syrian regime openly pledged support to the Palestinian guerrilla raids. On Nov. 13, 1966, an Israeli strike into Jordan left 18 dead and 54 wounded. Taunted openly for hiding behind the UNEF, Nasser felt he had to act. The Egyptian president requested the UNEF’s withdrawal from the Sinai border. But that included, as UN Secretary-General U Thant interpreted the order, removing UN troops stationed at Sharm al-Shaykh at the head of the Gulf of Aqaba. Egyptian troops there proceeded to close the gulf to Israeli shipping.

Israel had made it clear that blockading the gulf would be a cause for war. On June 5, 1967, Israel launched what it called a preemptive attack on Egypt, Jordan, and Syria, which led to a short conflict that came to be known as the Six-Day (or June) War. Israel’s victory over Egypt and its allies was rapid and overwhelming. Within the first hours of the war, all of Egypt’s airfields were struck, and most Egyptian planes were demolished on the ground. In the Sinai Peninsula, Egyptian forces were defeated and put to flight. An estimated 10,000 Egyptians died, and the Israelis reached the Suez Canal on June 8. During the war, Israel occupied the entire Sinai Peninsula (along with territories belonging to the other Arab belligerents), and the Suez Canal was closed to traffic. Instead, the waterway became a fortified ditch between the two warring sides.

Egypt was crushed by the loss, all the more because the government media had painted a rosy but misleading picture of Egyptian operations during the opening days of the war. Nasser, humiliated, resigned, but there was a popular outpouring of support, only partially manipulated by the government, for him to remain in office. Regardless, the Nasser era was, in fact, over. Egypt rearmed rapidly and a low-level conflict, later known as the War of Attrition, soon began along the canal with the Israeli army (particularly its air force). In both domestic and foreign affairs, however, Nasser began a turn to the right that his successor, Anwar el-Sādāt, was to accelerate sharply.

The Sādāt regime

Nasser died on Sept. 28, 1970, and was succeeded by his vice president, Sādāt, himself a Free Officer. Although then viewed as an interim figure, Sādāt soon revealed unexpected gifts for political survival. In May 1971 he outmaneuvered a formidable combination of rivals for power, calling his victory the “Corrective Revolution.” Sādāt then used his strengthened position to launch a war with Israel in October 1973, thereby setting the stage for a new era in Egypt’s history.

The Sādāt era really began with the October (Yom Kippur) War of 1973. The concerted Syrian-Egyptian attack on October 6 should have come as no surprise, given the continuing tensions along the canal zone (although the War of Attrition had ended shortly before Nasser’s death), but the Arab attack caught Israel completely off guard. Egypt held no illusions that Israel could be vanquished. Rather, the war was launched with the diplomatic aim of convincing a chastened, if still undefeated, Israel to negotiate on terms more favourable to the Arabs. Preparation for the war included Sādāt’s announcement in July 1972 that nearly all Soviet military advisers would leave Egypt—partly because the Soviets had refused to sell offensive weapons to the Arab countries.

Egypt did not win the war in any military sense. As soon as Israel recovered from the initial shock of Arab gains in the first few days of fighting—and once the United States abandoned its early neutrality and resupplied Israel with a massive airlift of military supplies—the Israelis drove the Egyptians and Syrians back. A cease-fire was secured by the United States while Egyptian troops remained east of the Suez Canal and Israeli forces had crossed over to its western side.

Still, the initial successes in October 1973 enabled Sādāt to pronounce the war an Egyptian victory and to seek an honourable peace. Egyptian interests, as Sādāt saw them, dictated peace with Israel. Despite friction with his Syrian allies, Sādāt signed the Sinai I (1974) and Sinai II (1975) disengagement agreements that returned the western Sinai and secured large foreign assistance commitments to Egypt. When Israeli inflexibility combined with Arab resistance to slow events, Sādāt made a dramatic journey to Jerusalem on Nov. 19, 1977, to address the Israeli Knesset (parliament). Tortuous negotiations between Egypt and Israel ensued. The climactic meeting in September 1978 of Sādāt, Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, and U.S. Pres. Jimmy Carter at Camp David in Maryland produced a pair of agreements known as the Camp David Accords. Both Sādāt and Begin were awarded the 1978 Nobel Prize for Peace for these negotiations, and on March 26, 1979, the two leaders formally signed the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty. The agreement provided for peace between Egypt and Israel and set up a framework for resolving the complex Palestinian issue. Its provisions included the withdrawal of Israeli armed forces and civilians from Sinai within three years, the establishment of special security arrangements on the peninsula, the creation of a buffer zone along the Sinai-Israel border to be patrolled by UN peacekeeping forces, and the normalization of economic and cultural relations between the two countries, including the exchange of ambassadors. The status of the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza territories and the issue of Palestinian autonomy were to be negotiated.

Sādāt linked his peace initiative to the task of economic reconstruction, and proclaimed an open-door policy (Arabic: infitāḥ), hoping that a liberalized Egyptian economy would be revitalized by the inflow of Western and Arab capital. The peace process did produce economic benefits, notably a vast U.S. aid program, begun in 1975, that exceeded $1 billion annually by 1981.

The Sādāt peace with Israel was not without its costs, however. As the narrowness of the Israeli interpretation of Palestinian autonomy under the Camp David agreement became clear, Sādāt could not convince the Arab world that the accords would ensure legitimate Palestinian rights. Egypt lost the financial support of the Arab states and, shortly after signing the peace treaty, was expelled from the Arab League.

At home, a new constitution promulgated in 1971 significantly increased the power of individual citizens to participate in the political process, and by 1976 laws were instituted permitting the creation of political parties. But democratization of political life did not prove to be an acceptable substitute for economic revitalization. On Jan. 18–19, 1977, demonstrations provoked by economic hardship broke out in Egypt’s major cities. Nearly 100 people were killed, and several thousand were either injured or jailed. The removal of the most oppressive features of Nasser’s rule, the return in controlled form to a multiparty system, and (at least initially) the Sādāt peace with Israel were all welcomed. But, as Egypt entered the 1980s, the failure to resolve the Palestinian issue and to relieve mass economic hardships, heightened by the widening class gaps, undermined Sādāt’s legitimacy. The West failed to notice this until, in September 1981, Sādāt arrested some 1,500 of Egypt’s political elite.

Perhaps more ominous during the 1970s were the signs of rising Muslim extremism throughout the country. Under Nasser, the Muslim Brotherhood had been firmly squelched. Sayyid Quṭb had been executed in 1966 for treason, but large numbers of Muslim activists—many of them radicalized by imprisonment and by Quṭb’s writings on jihad and the apostasy of modern Muslim culture—went underground. Under Sādāt, groups of Muslim activists were given wide latitude to proselytize, particularly on Egypt’s university campuses, where it was hoped that they would counter lingering left-wing and Nasserite sentiment among the students, and members of the Muslim Brotherhood were released from prison and allowed to operate with relative freedom. Yet during that time there was a growing rise in religious violence, particularly directed against the country’s Coptic community but also, with growing frequency, against the government. The group al-Takfīr wa al-Hijrah (roughly, “Identification of Unbelief and Flight from Evil”—founded in 1967 after Quṭb’s execution) engaged in several terrorist attacks during the decade, and other groups, namely Islamic Jihad (al-Jihād al-Islāmī) and the Islamic Group (al-Jamāʿah al-Islāmiyah), formed with the goal of overthrowing Egypt’s secular state.

The Mubārak regime

Sādāt’s assassination on Oct. 6, 1981, by militant soldiers associated with Islamic Jihad was greeted in Egypt by uprisings in some areas but mostly by a deafening calm. It was with a profound sense of relief that Egyptians brought Ḥosnī (Ḥusnī) Mubārak, Sādāt’s handpicked vice president, to power, with a mandate for cautious change. As an air force general and hero of the Yom Kippur War, Mubārak had worked closely with Sādāt since 1973.

Domestic and foreign policy

During his first year as president, Mubārak struck a moderate note, neither backing away from the peace with Israel nor loosening ties with the United States. By pursuing that steady course, he was able to prevent any delay in the return of the occupied Sinai Peninsula to Egyptian sovereignty in April 1982. At the same time, Mubārak tried to contain the disaffections that had surfaced in the last year of Sādāt’s era. He announced the end of the reign of the privileged minority that had dominated the invigorated private sector during the Sādāt years. He also released Sādāt’s political prisoners, while prosecuting vigorously the Islamic militants who had plotted the late president’s assassination. Unfortunately, Egypt’s worsening economic problems could not be solved quickly. But in his very first speeches Mubārak did frankly and perceptively identify Egypt’s economic shortcomings.

These solid beginnings were undercut when Israel invaded Lebanon in June 1982, only five weeks after the Jewish state’s final withdrawal from the Sinai Peninsula. In Egypt the invasion was perceived as an Israeli attempt to destroy Palestinian nationalism, and Mubārak was accused by his foes of allowing Israel to exploit Egypt’s disengagement. Official relations with Israel were severely strained until Israel initiated its partial withdrawal from Lebanon in 1985. However, Mubārak’s cautious policies did enable Egypt to repair its relationships with most of the moderate Arab states. At an Arab League summit in 1987, each government was authorized to restore diplomatic relations with Egypt as it saw fit; Iraq—which had been a leading critic of Sādāt’s peace with Israel but by then was in a protracted war with Iran—took that opportunity to purchase military supplies from Egypt. Egypt resumed membership in the league two years later.

Within the country, opposition to a variety of political, economic, and social policies continued, chiefly among discontented labour and religious groups. The government contained labour strikes, food riots, and other incidents of unrest and adopted several measures aimed at curbing a determined drive by Islamic extremists to destabilize the regime.

In the late 1980s Egypt’s economy suffered markedly from falling oil prices and was further weakened by a drop in the number of remittances from its three million workers abroad. In spite of a rising debt burden, the government continued to rely heavily on foreign economic aid, leading to growing interference by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in Egypt’s economic policies; in 1991 the Egyptian government signed the Economic Reform and Structural Adjustment Program with the IMF and the World Bank. The country’s currency, the Egyptian pound, had to be devalued several times, interest rates were raised, and subsidies were lowered on food and fuel. These policies especially harmed the poorest Egyptians, who often looked to Islamist groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood for assistance. Some Muslim extremists, however, including Islamic Jihad and the Islamic Group, continued to resort to terrorism against political leaders, secularist writers, Copts, and even foreign tourists, the last-named being a major source of Egypt’s foreign exchange.

Politics in Egypt continued to follow authoritarian patterns, as Mubārak was reelected to the presidency without opposition in 1987, 1993, and 1999, and although opposition candidates contested the 2005 election, he was reelected that year as well. His National Democratic Party (NDP) continued to increase its majority of delegates in the People’s Assembly in the elections held every five years. The Muslim Brotherhood, unofficially allowed to revive under Sādāt but never authorized to become a political party, threw its popular support to the New Wafd in one election and to the Liberal Socialists in another. It was widely believed that voting results were rigged to ensure that Mubārak’s supporters would win.

Although Egypt’s press was freer than it had been under Nasser or Sādāt, Mubārak introduced a law in 1995 that would imprison journalists or party leaders who published news injurious to a government official. Popular pressure caused the Assembly to scale down the law, which was eventually voided by Egypt’s Constitutional Court. However, the growing censorship by the Islamic courts and the rector of al-Azhar University tempered freedom of speech and the press in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

In its struggle against Islamist terrorism, Mubārak’s regime resorted to preventive detention and, allegedly, torture. Egyptian terrorists, for their part, assassinated several government ministers, nearly killed Mubārak himself in Addis Ababa, Eth., in 1995, and gunned down tourists near Egypt’s most famous monuments—including an especially violent attack at Luxor in 1997. A leading Islamist, Sheikh ʿUmar ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, escaped to the United States, where he took part in a 1993 truck bomb attack on New York City’s World Trade Center and was later sentenced to life imprisonment for that crime and for conspiracy to commit further attacks. Another Islamist leader, a Cairene pediatrician named Ayman al-Zawahiri, fled to Afghanistan, where he led members of Islamic Jihad in joining the transnational terrorist organization known as al-Qaeda. Despite government initiatives to control the problem, domestic terrorism remains a threat to Egypt’s stability.

Some social and economic problems either stemmed from or were exacerbated by Egypt’s involvement in the Persian Gulf War (1990–91) on the side of the U.S.-led coalition. Egyptian troops took part in the conflict, as did soldiers from many Arab countries. Although Egypt was rewarded for its participation by forgiveness of billions of dollars that it owed for the purchase of arms from the West, many Egyptian expatriate workers lost their jobs in Iraq because of that country’s invasion of Kuwait. Likewise, Egypt’s hopes that its contractors would win bids to help rebuild Kuwait after the war were disappointed, and a plan to station Egyptian and Syrian troops as peacekeepers in the region was rejected by the Persian Gulf states. Perhaps understandably, financially strapped Egyptians began to resent wealthy Saudis, Kuwaitis, and other gulf Arabs who often spent their vacations gambling in Cairo’s luxury hotels.

The Egyptian public also grew skeptical of ongoing efforts by successive U.S. presidents and by their own president to promote peace between Israel and other Arab countries and, particularly, the Palestinians. In a changing global economy, there was a popular suspicion that such attempts at fostering better relations might have some ulterior motive. In particular, many Egyptians feared a possible U.S. and Israeli attempt to manipulate Egypt’s industries, especially since computer and information technology—both of which Egypt depended heavily on the West to obtain and use—became more vital to economic growth. Since 2004, however, expansion of the country’s Internet connectivity has ranked particularly high on the economic agenda of Egypt’s prime minister, Ahmad Nazif, himself a computer engineer.

In fact, Mubārak’s commitment to domestic development was evident in his choice of three successive economic planners to serve as prime minister during the 1990s. And though Egypt was becoming ever more sophisticated economically, it was doing so at a high price. Its independence was being curtailed by interference from international lenders such as the IMF, and a growing disparity in income and access to resources was straining relations between its rich and poor citizens as well as contributing to the erosion of unity between its Muslims and Copts. While some Muslims accused the Copts of serving as agents for foreign powers and of controlling Egypt’s economy, some Copts accused Muslims of destroying churches and compelling Egyptian Christians to convert to Islam. Although both Muslim and Christian Egyptians have, for the most part, made an effort to minimize their differences publicly in order to maintain national unity, rapid and uneven development has ultimately posed a threat to Egypt’s political and cultural leadership of the Arab world.

Internal tensions grew as the Mubārak regime continued to suppress opposition, arresting dissident leaders and restricting political expression. Widespread irregularities were observed in the legislative elections of November 2010, which the NDP won overwhelmingly, effectively eliminating opposition parties from the People’s Assembly.

Unrest in 2011

Days after a popular uprising in Tunisia, known as the Jasmine Revolution, forced Pres. Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali from power, protests against the Mubārak regime erupted on Jan. 25, 2011. Thousands of protesters crowded into the main streets of downtown Cairo, chanting slogans against corruption, political repression, and poverty. The protests appeared to have been organized by networks of individuals communicating via social media, bypassing the leadership of Egypt’s established opposition groups. As protests continued, clashes between protesters grew more heated, resulting in mass arrests, injuries, and a few deaths. Protests erupted in other cities throughout the country, with especially violent clashes taking place in Suez and Alexandria. As the demonstrations progressed, Egypt’s established opposition groups increased their participation. On the third day of protests Mohamed ElBaradei, the leader of the opposition coalition National Association for Change, traveled to Cairo to participate in the demonstrations. The Muslim Brotherhood, the opposition group with the greatest popular support in Egypt, also announced that it would participate in demonstrations.

The protests reached a new level of violence on January 28, when thousands of demonstrators clashed with police following Friday prayers. Police attempted to control the protesters with tear gas, water cannons, and rubber bullets. Many protesters were beaten, either by uniformed police or by plainclothes security forces. The government began to take emergency measures, declaring a curfew and cutting off Internet and telephone service in many locations. As protests continued into the evening, police stations and NDP buildings throughout the country were attacked or set on fire by demonstrators. In Cairo the NDP national headquarters was burned, and protesters fought running battles with security forces in the street. Egyptian army units were deployed in downtown Cairo to protect key locations and buildings.

Late in the evening Mubārak appeared on state television, addressing the country for the first time since the outbreak of protests. He indicated that he intended to remain president, but he announced that he had asked his cabinet to resign immediately. He also acknowledged the protesters’ grievances by pledging to advance social reforms in Egypt. Most protesters dismissed the announcement as a desperate bid by Mubārak to remain in power, and protests continued.

As the crisis progressed, Mubārak took steps to reinforce his ties with Egypt’s senior military leadership. In addition to appointing several senior military officers to his new cabinet, Mubārak appointed a vice president for the first time in his presidency, choosing Omar Suleiman, the director of the powerful Egyptian General Intelligence Service. However, the Egyptian military’s stance toward the protests and the Mubārak regime remained uncertain. Army units in downtown Cairo refrained from using force against the demonstrators, and in some cases soldiers and officers appeared to signal their solidarity with the crowds. On January 31 the army announced on state television that it would not use force against demonstrators. Under increasing pressure as demonstrations intensified, Mubārak appeared on Egyptian state television on February 1 and announced that he would not run in Egypt’s next presidential election, scheduled for September 2011.

Mubārak’s announcement was immediately followed by some of the most brutal violence since the protests began. A crowd of Mubārak supporters fought antigovernment demonstrators in Tahrir Square in Cairo, resulting in at least five deaths; an estimated 1,500 people were injured. It was widely suspected that many of the Mubārak supporters who participated in the fighting were members of the the regime’s plainclothes security force launching a coordinated attack on protesters. The army units stationed in the square struggled to separate Mubārak supporters and protesters, but fights continued to break out sporadically. Ahmed Shafiq, Egypt’s recently appointed prime minister, apologized for the violence that had taken place in Tahrir Square but denied that the actions of the Mubārak supporters had been directed by the government.

In early February members of the government, led by Suleiman, met with representatives of the opposition, including members of the Muslim Brotherhood. The government offered some concessions, including the release of political prisoners and increased media freedom. The offer was rejected by the opposition, which continued to demand that Mubārak leave office immediately. Protests continued in Egypt, although violence between security forces and protesters decreased. Thousands of protesters continued to occupy Tahrir Square, erecting tents to provide food and medical services. Egyptians from a number of industries, including doctors, textile workers, and transportation workers, engaged in strikes in solidarity with the protesters. Under continued pressure to step down immediately, Mubārak gave a televised speech on February 10. He promised to delegate some of his power to the vice president, amend the constitution to eliminate restrictions on who could run for president, and eventually lift the emergency law that had been in place since 1981. However, he refused to step down as president.

On February 11, as protesters frustrated by Mubārak’s refusal to step down assembled at locations around Cairo, including the presidential palace, it was announced that Mubārak and his family had departed the capital for Sharm al-Shaykh, a resort town on the Sinai Peninsula where he maintained a residence. The same day, the army issued a statement saying that as soon as protests in Egypt ended, the country’s emergency law would be lifted. That evening Suleiman appeared on state television to announce that Mubārak had stepped down as president, leaving the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, composed of Egypt’s highest-ranking military officers, to administer the country’s affairs. The announcement was met with jubilation among the crowds of protesters in Cairo.

Soon after Mubārak’s departure, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, led by Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, Egypt’s minister of defense, formally imposed martial law, suspending the constitution and dissolving the People’s Assembly and the Consultative Assembly. Mubārak’s cabinet was retained as a transitional body. The military government announced that it would continue to recognize treaties, including the 1979 peace treaty between Egypt and Israel. Tantawi stated that the military would remain in power until new elections could be held, possibly within six months.

As the military worked to restore order in Egypt, clearing the protesters out of Tahrir Square and calling for a return to normal life, thousands of workers held new demonstrations and strikes to call for better pay and better working conditions. A group of Egyptian police rallied in Cairo to demand higher wages. Police demonstrators also sought to improve the public image of the police, damaged by the perception that they had used excessive force against protesters, saying that the harsh police response had been ordered by the ministry of the interior.

Following Mubārak’s departure, Egyptian authorities began to investigate alleged corruption and abuses of power by Mubārak and his inner circle. On February 21 the Egyptian prosecutor general requested the freezing of the Mubārak family’s foreign assets. Shortly afterward a travel ban was issued, aimed at preventing Mubārak, who remained secluded in his villa at Sharm al-Shaykh, from leaving the country. In addition, a number of high-level Mubārak-era officials, NDP leaders, and businessmen suspected of corruption were arrested or prohibited from traveling.

On February 26 the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces approved a draft of constitutional amendments limiting the powers of the president and making presidential elections more open. On March 4 a popular referendum on the amendments was scheduled for March 19.

Demonstrators had taken to the streets once again on February 25, this time to protest the composition of the interim cabinet, which had been appointed by the military and sworn in on February 22. Although opponents of the Mubārak regime were included in the new cabinet, protesters were angered that Mubārak allies retained a number of key portfolios, including defense, interior, justice, and foreign affairs, and that Shafiq, a Mubārak appointee, remained prime minister. Demonstrators continued to assemble in Tahrir Square to demand that the Mubārak-era ministers resign and to push other reforms, including the release of political prisoners and the repeal of the emergency law. On March 3 the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces announced Shafiq’s resignation, a day after he gave a widely criticized interview on Egyptian television. He was replaced as prime minister by Essam Sharaf, a former minister of transportation who became a vocal critic of the Mubārak regime after resigning in 2005.

On March 5 hundreds of Egyptians stormed offices of the State Security Investigations (SSI) agency in several cities, including the agency’s headquarters in Cairo, following rumours that officers had begun destroying documents showing human rights violations. Inside the compound, which was was not staffed, the crowd seized documents, including surveillance files for individual Egyptians and records of operations against dissidents and opposition groups. Shortly after the raids, images of some of the seized documents were posted on pro-democracy Internet sites. On March 6 protesters who had gathered at the interior ministry building in Cairo to call for reform of the security services were attacked by plainclothes security forces, the first time that such forces had clashed with crowds of protesters since Mubārak’s departure.

Prime Minister Sharaf’s new caretaker government was sworn in on March 7. In the new cabinet officials with fewer ties to the former regime replaced the Mubārak loyalists who had remained from the previous cabinet. On March 15 the ministry of the interior announced the dissolution of the SSI. The state news agency reported that it would be replaced with a new security service that would not commit human rights violations or interfere with Egyptians’ political liberties.

The constitutional referendum promised by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces took place on March 19. Constitutional changes that eased restrictions on candidacy in elections, set term limits for the president, and restricted the use of emergency laws were approved by 77 percent of Egyptian voters. Although the referendum passed by a wide margin, the main youth protest groups opposed it, saying that the changes did not go far enough and that a new constitution was needed instead.